ܕܟܠ ܡܕܡ ܡܨܐ ܐܢܐ ܚܝܠܐ ܒܡܫܝܚܐ ܕܡܚܝܠ ܠܝ "I can do every thing through Christ which strengthens me." Phil 4:13
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ܐܦܛܪܘܦܘܬܐ ܦܛܪܝܪܟܝܬܐ [Our Faith] homeNicene Creed ܬܚܘܡܐ ܕܗܝܡܢܘܬܐ ܕܢܝܩܝܐ
NOTES
When the Apostles' Creed was drawn up, the chief enemy was Gnosticism, which denied that Jesus was truly Man; and the emphases of the Apostles' Creed reflect a concern with repudiating this error. When the Nicene Creed was drawn up, the chief enemy was Arianism, which denied that Jesus was fully God. Arius was a presbyter (=priest = elder) in Alexandria in Egypt, in the early 300's. He taught that the Father, in the beginning, created (or begot) the Son, and that the Son, in conjunction with the Father, then proceeded to create the world. The result of this was to make the Son a created being, and hence not God in any meaningful sense. It was also suspiciously like the theories of those Gnostics and pagans who held that God was too perfect to create something like a material world, and so introduced one or more intermediate beings between God and the world. God created A, who created B, who created C... who created Z, who created the world.
Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria,
sent for Arius and questioned him. Arius stuck to his position,
and was finally excommunicated by a council of Egyptian bishops.
He went to Nicomedia in Asia, where he wrote letters defending his
position to various bishops. Finally, the Emperor Constantine
summoned a council of Bishops in Nicea (Now modern Iznik, Turkey),
and there in 325 the Bishops of the Church, by a decided majority,
repudiated Arius and produced the first draft of what is now
called the Nicene Creed.
The Arian position has been revived
in our own day by the Watchtower Society (the JW's), who
explicitly hail Arius as a great witness to the truth.
The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted and used brief statements or the law of the Christian Faith. The First Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea in A.D. 325 formulated the beliefs of all Christians in what has since been known as the Nicene creed. The second and third synods at Constantinople and Ephesus expanded this statement of faith. To this day, this remains the creed of the Syriac Orthodox Church.
According to the Syriac Orthodox
Church, the Creed is to be recited at the
conclusion of Prayers both morning and evening, before retiring,
and in the beginning of the Divine Liturgy. It is Common Ground to
Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and
many other Christian groups. Many groups that do not have a
tradition of using it in their services nevertheless are committed
to the doctrines it teaches.
* The word Catholic is a Greek word
KATHOLIKOS comes from KATA (a preposition with various meanings
depending on the context, often meaning "down" or "negative" as in
"catabolic" or "catastrophe" or "cathode," but also often meaning
"according to") and HOLOS (meaning "whole" as in "holistic
medicine," which claims to treat the whole patient and not just the
particular ailment complained of), and thus means, literally,
"according to the whole (world). or Universal" The meaning of the
word as applied to the Church has evolved especially in the days of
St. Ignatius Noorono the third Patriarch of Antioch (+107). We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ek tes ousias] of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father [homoousion to patri], through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead.
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